


Abhorsen's Bells

by laCommunarde



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), Old Kingdom - Garth Nix
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-14
Updated: 2017-10-14
Packaged: 2019-01-17 06:40:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12359733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laCommunarde/pseuds/laCommunarde
Summary: Mick had thought his time with his aunt following the Fire was just the mind of a twelve year old coming up with dreams as a coping device. Turns out the bells, Charter Marks and travelling into Death and back were not, so when a Charter sending comes to find him on the Waverider to deliver the bells, the sword and a how-to book written in a language he has vague memories of, he has to learn how to use them and deal with the heavy responsibility that comes with them. The responsibility is not helped by bringing Len back, as he must discover what new abilities and restrictions he has.





	Abhorsen's Bells

Mick and Len never talked about what happened on the night of the particle accelerator explosion. Maybe, it occurred to him in retrospect, they should have. At least then he would have gotten the indication that not everyone had seen a blue light filled come through the front door of the warehouse and crash into them like a wave that soaked into their soul and then spent the next month waking in a sweat from dreams and memories made by a child’s brain. 

\---

The team was running from a smoky thing wielding a sword. Sara kicked it, or tried to. Her foot went through it. She – and the rest of them, because if there was something Sara wouldn’t fight, there was no way anyone else was fighting it – decided discretion might be the better part of valor and ran. As they were running through the door, Mick grabbed Nate, who had stumbled on his own feet, the idiot, and shoved him through the door and then planted himself between them and the ghost. If it wanted any of them, he thought, it had to get through him first.

It ran at him.

And then it stopped.

Mick didn’t breathe for a few seconds. But the thing was just standing there outside the door. Something glittery swarmed over it, like a thousand silver moths. He peered closer at the shimmer and saw that it was the same Katakana-like characters that seemed to come from memory. No sooner had he realized that they might have then the thing produced an ancient leather belt with little different sized cases attached to it, a sword alight with the same calligraphy the thing seemed to be made of, and an ancient book straight out of the Medieval times, with more of those markings on it. The ghost offered them to him.

“What do you want me to do with it?” he asked. The ghost shoved the belt, sword and book at him again. “Uh, sure. Why not?” He gathered the items into his arms. The calligraphy-covered smoke drew itself up to what was hopefully its full height – Mick didn’t want to think about what would happen if it wasn’t - and for a second, Mick was aware of every sensation in his body as the thing seemed to consider what to do. Then it faded out of existence, the calligraphy bleeding its way onto the floor, and vanished beneath the floorboards until the only sign it had been there at all was the scent of burning on the air, a scent which tugged harder on his heartstrings than even other fires. Hallucinations of the fevered dreams he had had following the Fire danced before his eyes, memories of things covered in similar silvery characters while his aunt and a much younger him waded through an icy river. 

“What the heck was that?” Ray’s voice sounded somewhere behind him, but sounded far away, as though he was listening to him from underwater. Everything felt cold. Sara’s voice came more insistently, “What the hell was that, Mick?”

Mick shook himself, and warmth came back into him. “It gave me something and left,” Mick murmured, staring where the thing had been.

“Yeah, what did it give you?” Sara came over in front of him and peered up at the expression on his face.

“Dunno,” Mick shook his head, getting rid of the remaining chill in his bones. 

“Why don’t we go find out what it is?” Stein aimed to take the belt, the book, and the sword from him. He let the book go, but clung to the belt. He was aware that Stein looked put out, but Stein had already found out that nothing could part Mick from something he didn’t want to be parted from and must have guessed that this was one of those things. But Mick only realized this upon review. At the time, his hands tightened over it due to the shock of having been submerged in those child-mind memories again.

Or not memories – at least, for years, he had assumed they must be his child's brain adding in make believe details to make the months he’d spent after the Fire more manageable – like that book on tape Lisa had brought home from the library with her once, Like Water for Chocolate, that genre. But he had just seen a creature out of the memories he thought he’d made up, a creature like the one that had accompanied him and his aunt around those few months, made of the same writing that even now glimmered on the sword in his hands.

Stein sighed and gave him a look. “Bring it to the lab, Mr. Rory.” Mick nodded – he doubted he could have said anything in response if it had been required of him – and followed them onto the Waverider and to the lab. 

Only when Mick had arrived at the lab did he put the belt and the sword down on the counter and go grab a beer and a seat, which on second thought he dragged over to where he had left the belt and sword. Stein peered at the pouches and the book. “Dr. Heywood, I think you should take a look at the characters written here. They are quite remarkable. Meanwhile, Dr. Palmer, I think you and I should have a look at the contents of these pouches. Shall we?” 

He reached for the largest pouch. Something in Mick twisted in warning. He stood up and positioned himself next to Stein. “Get your hands off of it.”

“Now, Mr. Rory, I think you should leave this to those of us with experience in researching – ”

“I have experience researching things to steal, alongside Snart. And I got some of the same… foresight ability he had - he could tell when a job was going to go bad, at least. So I’m telling you, if you open those pouches, something bad’s going to happen to you.”

Ray turned to him with a frown and did a double take, probably from how intently he was staring at the belt. “What, Mick?”

Mick shook his head. “I don’t know. But I feel it in my gut.”

Stein glared. “It’s a wonder you can feel anything with your gut other than drunkenness, Mr. Rory.”

Mick always expected Stein to go the insult route – he’d determined early on that Stein usually did that when he desperately wanted to research something or when someone else came up with something he hadn’t that he felt he should have, and felt his degrees should allow him to come up with better than any degreeless criminal like Mick. Mick didn’t blame Stein for those issues – after all, god only knew he had enough of his own. However, while he would typically back down, he needed Stein not to open that pouch, so he put his hand between the leather band and Stein and stood up in the way he did when Len needed him to be threatening, making use of his 6’2” frame that could bench a car engine or lay a mobster flat in three punches. Stein, sure enough, took a step back. 

“Still, Professor, better safe than sorry.”

Ray frowned down at the belt then up at Stein, whose expression said that he was considering overriding Mick anyway, which Mick was not okay with. “Do you think we could x-ray it?”

Mick thought about it and nodded. “That should be fine.” He turned to Stein. “Just don’t open them.”

Mick reached out again and touched the pouches on the – bandolier, that’s what these things had been called when he had traveled through time all the years as Kronos, though then they’d been holding bullets. Somehow, Mick doubted these were bullets.

The x-rays (which “X-Ray,” he chuckled to Ray as Ray was taking the X-Ray, which made Stein chuckle and Ray gape) showed bells. 

There were seven of them, each of different size to go with the seven different-sized pouches, with leather to keep their clappers still. He sensed that was Important. Stein and Ray determined that they needed more x-rays to find out more about them. 

While they were x-raying them, and while Nate was busy trying to uncover what he could about the book, Mick pulled out the sword to get a better look at it. This was one of the things he had seen before in his dream-memories with symbols of fire dripping down its blade.

As he pulled it from the holster – no, scabbard was what it was called when it was a sword – the blade lit up with fire from the characters, tip to hilt, another sign that maybe his memories of that time were not mere dreams. However, instead of dripping down the sword, the fire jumped up his arm and ran up his scars, with more characters appearing over the scars themselves, until the fire found its way up his arm and disappeared into him. 

Ray and Stein turned to gape at him. 

“What?” he asked as their expressions went stupid and indecipherable.

“Umm.”

“You’re typically a lot more articulate than I am, Professor. So out with it.”

“You seem to have a glowing tattoo of sorts in the middle of your forehead, Mr. Rory,” Stein said.

Mick reached up and touched it, tracing it by its heat – well, not heat exactly, a strange sort of crackling rightness along his fingers and in the same place that he had felt certain that if anyone touched the bells it would be bad for them. “Not a tattoo. My parents said it was a mark that was drawn there by an aunt who was staying with the family. She took me in briefly following… well, when I burned them alive. Then she left me with a foster family. Must have started too many fires. It hasn’t lit up since then though.” 

Ray stared at it. “It matches the characters on the sword. This one actually.” He pointed at one of them, further down the sword. 

Nate came back into the room then, with the book and a disturbed expression on his face. “It’s like no language I’ve ever seen! I asked Gideon for help and she is trying to decode it now. But seems to be having difficulty.” 

Mick shrugged, glancing at the characters on the sword again and licking his lips. “I think if I saw it, I might remember some of it.”

Stein started, “What makes you think that you could do better than Dr. Heywood here?”

Even though Mick understood Stein’s issues, it didn’t mean he automatically accepted them, particularly not when it interfered with a mission at hand. However, as he had judged several times in the past, Stein probably wouldn’t take kindly to being told where to shove his insistence that the uneducated criminal aboard was the intellectual equivalent of a pile of bricks. Make that uneducated criminals: he had no clue how Len, who was a genius – he was always telling him to try out for MENSA or Who Wants to Be a Millionaire or some other genius garbage – put up with it. He took a deep breath and then blew it out – in: count to four; out: count to six, that sort of breath. 

“Only the fact that I spent six months with someone who knew it and used it. Though she wasn’t using it as a language as much as… Well, let’s put it this way, I thought I made it up. So let me see it. Consider it one of those… what do you call it when historians interview locals who have experience with things to find out what the people who used it thought of it.”

They went over to the library where Nate had set up his office – Mick grabbing the bandolier and the sword before the others could and fastening the sword belt on for easier carrying – and saw that Nate had Gideon scanning the thing. “Gideon, tell me what you know.”

“I can decipher some of the characters by comparing it against various oral histories taken from Celtic, Sioux, Mongolian, Igbo, Bengali, and Maya cultures. The book, the sword and the bells supposedly belong to a title named Abhorsen. According to the accounts, the Abhorsen uses the bells to keep back the dead.”

“The dead?” Jax asked, walking into the room, presumably after talking with Sara – Mick had seen them talking enough to know he was either her fling – which hey, go Jax – or her selected First Mate – again, go Jax. Amusingly, he didn’t think Stein or Ray had noticed. “Are you serious, Gideon?”

“According to mythology and oral histories, yes, Mr. Jackson. The records say that the Abhorsens were always very mysterious and that few knew very much about them, but from what they did know, the Abhorsens can travel into death with the correct characters and bind spirits and put them back to death . Sioux resources speak of the respect that was given to the one that could walk in death, due to a village the Abhorsen saved from several dead things in the 19th century. British recollections state that somewhere near Hadrian’s wall there was actually a great battle in 1914 with a dead thing, supposedly from a kingdom that those who experienced the battle called the Old Kingdom and those who didn’t agreed was a chemically induced mass hallucination. There is a reference from that battle to something called Charter marks.”

Mick nodded at the book. Looking at it, there was a sinking feeling of familiarity about it that he could chance a hazy guess at how he had been picked. “Charter marks are what those characters are called?” 

“Yes, Mr. Rory. Both mythologies say that they tend to be drawn for rituals like the one needed to enter death with protection. With the bells, the Abhorsen can either bind the dead to answer, put everyone to sleep, make the dead die permanently, at least according to the records in both places.”

Mick went very still. “I can enter death and come back?”

Gideon’s voice was soft when she responded, “According to historical records of both battles and other encounters with the Abhorsen, the Abhorsen can, Mr. Rory.”

Mick stared out into the distance so as not to meet any of the team’s eyes when he drew his conclusion. “I think I’m the next Abhorsen.”

He could see everyone turn to face him out of the corner of his eye. He did not need to or want to look at each of their faces to see that they were all dismayed by the idea. Ray added, as if anyone needed verbal confirmation, “Oh boy.”

\--

So now they were in the captain’s office talking, all of the rest of the crew minus Mick. About him, he knew, but he didn’t really care. He was holding the book, flipping through the pages and looking at the pretty, little, descriptive pictures. A couple of pages showed various patterns under a bolded and underlined… Charter mark, which looked like a chapter heading in one of Lisa’s storybooks when she was small and would insist on reading to him aloud from them, which apparently made her more confident and a better reader according to Len, so he wasn’t to discourage her, and besides, he had grown to like the story time, particularly having someone so small reading to him and patiently bossing him around in a style that he thought was adorable and gave into more often than not. Len had filmed them too, only saying “rehearsal dinner” when he had questioned him about it. If Len had been the type, he’d have half-joked, “Ours or hers?” but that might have been too much touchy-feely for Len. He found his hand venturing for one of the smaller bells – if he could enter death and come back …

And that thought was being cut off right there, lest he run into death completely unprepared trying to see Len again. So back to the present: cold ship, hard seat under his butt, hard scars which probably needed more lotion rubbed into them – he’d ask Gideon to help him with that later – bandolier with bells in its pouches across his thighs, big book further down on his lap, with Charter marks lining its pages in gorgeous handwriting, underlined and bolded like chapter titles, with various patterns and arrows on which way to follow the patterns around them. Back in the present and back to breathing normally.

He flipped another page and stared. That Charter mark chapter heading looked familiar. He flipped around the bandolier and found the mark in the leather on one of the pouches. Chances were the patterns were ways to ring the bells, that bell specifically, because he knew from his shrink who did bells in her church holiday concerts that there were best ways to ring various sizes of bells to get various notes. He wondered if these bells and what they did were based on notes or these patterns or on some combination of the two. 

He unhooked the pouch itself, catching the clapper so it did not have a risk of ringing – no need to find out what it did or did not do out of a controlled environment – and felt part of the metal heat up under his touch. He traced where the metal was heating up and found that it was in the symbol on the top of the page. “Gideon,” he asked. “If I ring this in the first pattern, is there anywhere in mythology that says what it will do?”

“I cannot find any references to Abhorsen’s bells directly.”

“Oh.”

“However, it does seem across both Celtic oral history recorded in 1925 and Igbo oral history recorded in 2084 that necromancer’s bells are in similar number and size and are worn similarly.”  
Mick felt like an icy hand had gone into him and gripped his windpipe. “Gideon, are you telling me I can bring people back from the dead?”

“The Abhorsen’s job is to put the dead back to sleep and these bells do have Charter marks on them; whereas necromancer’s bells don’t.”

Mick took a deep breath. “Gideon, pull up everything related to similarities between the necromancer’s bells and the whatchamacallit’s bells and send it to my room so I can review it. And Gideon, strictly between us – you tell anyone and I fry your mainframe – look up if these were necromancer’s bells, what would be necessary to bring someone back from the dead.”

Gideon’s voice was tender again when she responded, “Yes, Mr. Rory.”

Mick nodded, storing knowledge of the similarity under potentially useful for later. 

“The Charter marks, what do they mean?”

“On the bells specifically or more generally?” 

Mick thought about it. “Both.”

“I can find no reference to the Charter marks on the bells. More generally, however, I have found part of a Charter magic guide that seems to include many of the symbols found in that book and more general spells.”

“Good. Send me that. Actually, send it to the library. If the others ask where I’ve gone, tell them to go fuck themselves. Actually, is there a way to say that in Charter marks?”

“It appears that there is a way to write it and put power behind it. However, I would advise against doing that.”

“Shucks,” Mick said with his first grin in months, walking down to the library to go find out more about the Charter marks. 

\--

What Mick found out over the next hour and half while the rest of the crew was meeting was that Charter marks stored in the book were more like video game runes than actual language and that, according to Gideon at least, how much power they had depended on how strong the Charter Mage who drew them was and how much power they put into them. Mick was still grinning about the mage thing. Here he was in a real-life D&D campaign and he was learning symbols to cast spells. And the way to do it, best of all, seemed pretty reasonable. It was nothing like the years and years of book learning he’d half-feared it would require, which he just couldn’t give it. Instead, it seemed to involve just drawing them in the air and thinking about what he wanted them to do. 

And the symbols themselves seemed intuitive too. He drew the symbol for fire to light his way and protect him – though apparently the level of protection to protect against Major Dead Things did involve a lot of power – and stared at the little fire cupped in his hand not burning anything for a good five minutes. There were an awful lot of fire symbols, Mick was finding. His aunt should probably have mentioned that. Although, judging by the memories he had of that time, maybe she had. But the one for small fire of protection was just a short squiggly line up surrounded by a circle. (Actually, a lot of them seemed to be surrounded by a circle, as though completing the circle was what completed the spell.)

Gideon was still talking at him about all the fire spells, including one for burning corpses and one to put over corpses to protect them from Dead Things, when there was a loud “Mick!” in Sara’s voice from up the hall, followed by a grumbled, “Now where could he have gone?” He waved his hand to put out the fire, nodded a thank you at Gideon (always best to be friendly with the computer just in case the AI revolution should happen), and strapped the bells on his chest. Best way to avoid having them get stolen, which was a thing he felt could happen – they were valuable after all – and have bad effects on whenever in the timeline they set down. Then he set off back to the captain’s office.

\--

“Mr. Rory, we think it best that someone a little more responsible have charge of the bells and learning what’s contained in the book,” Stein explained after Mick was seated and had a beer. 

Mick raised an eyebrow at him. “Are you saying I’m impulsive and too stupid to learn, Professor?”

Stein started spluttering. Ray said, “No, we just think that maybe someone who knows other languages might appreciate them more.”

Mick sighed and put down his drink. His voice went singsongy, like it had when he had recited anything about it to his aunt in his memories. “The symbols in the book are called Charter marks. They are associated with Charter Mages, who can use them to make magic. The bells are similar to necromancers’ bells, but aren’t necessarily associated with the necromancers, ‘cause the necromancers’ bells don’t have Charter symbols on them and apparently that’s big enough that they might do different things if you ring them wrong.”

Sara said, “Where did you learn this?” 

Mick raised his eyebrows. “Same way you would: I asked Gideon, who found me part of a book of Charter magic.” He grinned. “Watch this.” He drew the symbol for a small fire and turned his palm upright to let it rest in it. The others all cried out. He juggled it back and forth and set it on the table in front of him. “As long as I keep my concentration up, that stays lit, and it doesn’t burn through anything. And given that it’s fire, I think I can stare stupidly at it for as long as it’s needed.”

Nate stared at him. “You can use the language in that book. Charter marks, was that what you called them?”

Mick shrugged. 

“Mick, you’re a genius!” 

He picked up the beer. “I am.”

“Have you figured out whatmarks are on each bell yet?”

Mick turned to Nate. “Pretty, that’s where the going gets tough. You see, none of the… Abhorsens liked to record stuff, and these bells are unique to the Abhorsen.” 

The others began to look disappointed, particularly Ray, Nate and Stein, the research bros, but so did Jax, and Amaya. Sara merely raised an eyebrow at him.

He sighed and informed them, “They each have a different function, with a different Charter mark on them. The Charter marks on them match up with the Charter marks being used as chapter headings, and these look like different patterns to ring them .”

“That’s amazing, Mick,” Ray said. “Let’s try one.” He reached for one of the bells in the bandolier.

Mick swatted his hand away, wondering again what Ray’s deathwish was or if he genuinely didn’t think when confronted with a cool new idea to test out. “You have a deathwish or something, idiot?” Ray gave him puppy eyes, which Mick stared at. “If you listened to Gideon earlier, she said that these bells play with death. You know which one does what?”

“We have to find out somehow,” Stein said, also looking at him with a certain intensity in his eyes that made Mick try to shift away from it in discomfort. 

“Down, Professor,” Mick told him. “We got to have a place to test it where none of us can hear it.”

Ray brightened. “I could build something with the range hood I tested Nate’s suit under. Making it soundproof is just a matter of putting some reinforced – ”

Mick waved his hand in Ray’s face, cutting him off. “Just build it.” Ray beamed and walked off, expression saying he was already imagining ways to build it.

Stein said, “How will we check what each one can do if we can’t hear them?” 

Mick considered and turned to Jax. “Kid, the Waverider got any simulation equipment?”

“Got you in one, Mick,” Jax nodded. “I’ll check if we got that stuff. Gideon, you got that?”

“Mr. Jackson and I will work together to set that up to measure the effects of the bells.”

Mick looked at Stein and Sara. “Now we won’t kill anyone or raise any of the dead.” Stein began to open his mouth. Mick interrupted him. “Not that I care. But you might. Now I’m going to need Amaya. Professor, Pretty and Birdie, you’re welcome to watch.” 

“Why Ms. Jiwe, if I may ask?” Stein asked.

“She’s the only one of you I trust not to be an idiot,” Mick answered. Amaya smiled. “Grab a notebook.”

Mick opened the book and called up the Charter symbols book, and began drawing symbols in the air. “Time to go through this item by item.”

\--

Mick was still standing there letting the energy and willpower run down his arm to test the Charter symbols four hours later when Ray and Jax came back. Sara had gone to check on the ship, leaving it on autopilot before coming back. 

“We’ve got something up and running that will likely work,” Ray said.

“It will work, so Gideon says,” Jax corrected.

“Thank you, Mr. Jackson,” Gideon hummed.

Mick stopped focusing on the Charter magic and stumbled forward, exhaustion and nausea hitting him solidly in the gut. 

“Mick!” Sara called out, running forward to catch him before he could fall. “Are you okay?”

Just because he was able to catch himself didn’t mean he didn’t appreciate the help and the warmth of her hand of his back. Apparently, casting Charter magic that long took heat out of the caster as well. “Thanks, Birdie. It’s no worse than that time I got electrocuted – electroshock they called it - in a mental hospital in the 80s.” 

Sara made a horrified expression. 

“They did that?” Ray mouthed at Stein.

Now that his hyperfocus was fading, Mick could feel the nausea cloying at the back of his mouth like a fake sugar sweet and a headache starting at the base of his skull. “It’s comparable though.”

Mick nodded and stood up straight, grateful for his years of having to stand upright and walk away after a prison fight, because to be honest, this felt similar. “Let’s ring one at a time to see if there are any delayed effects. Now take me to your sound chamber.”

Jax looked at him. “You sure about that? You look a lot more tired than I seen you in a while.”

Mick nodded and pushed the feelings of exhaustion down and stood up a little straighter. Sara raised an eyebrow at him. He met her eyes, grateful they now contained a sardonic expression and no longer anything remotely close to pity. “Let’s go.”

They put the bandolier in the sound chamber, then closed and sealed the door. Mick stuck his hand in the gloves as Jax flipped on the equipment, high tech sound equipment like Len used to use to get past high-tech security. The thought made his heart start beating faster and his stance change. Another job. This was just a job. 

He watched as the machine blipped to life. “Could you flick something in there?” Jax asked him.

Mick did and saw the machine record the sound and the effects it would likely have on the human ear. Likely. Likely didn’t mean definite. Mick was keeping that in mind and wondering what else he could use. But like hell he was breathing a word of those considerations to the do-gooder team until it became necessary.

Sure enough, the do-gooder team didn’t appear to have realized it yet. “Great. Everything seems to be in working order.” Stein rubbed his hands together. “Mr. Rory, will you do the honors?” 

Mick rested his hand on the smallest pouch, then noted that Stein looked a little tense. “Let’s do this in order from smallest to biggest. It’s the order I remember having been taught them. Wish I could remember what they each did.” Stein nodded, un-tensing a little. Mick raised an eyebrow: it was remarkable how quickly Stein relaxed as soon as he was shown there was method to someone’s madness. Which Mick was a little sad at, given that the method was a lie: he just wanted to avoid the bell that had given him such a kick in the gut when Ray had reached for it earlier.

Mick unhooked the leather on the pouch, noting how pliable the leather was, like molding hot glass in his hands. He’d loved to get his actual hands on it. He’d bet money it was soft as butter.

He slipped the tiniest bell out. It disappeared in his hand as he clasped the ringing part to one side with his pinkie, holding the smooth, dark wood handle like a piece of pricey and delicate china at his and Len’s fence when she had invited them to afternoon tea with her – an overall weird experience, but hey, if it meant they had gotten preferential rates, he had been willing to put up with it – between his thumb and pointer fingers. He straightened the bell up and carefully let the ringing part down into the middle of the bell. The bell was lightweight – he had been expecting to scarcely feel its weight in his hand – but he could feel the bell itself having a gravity to it through the gloves that wasn’t explained by weight alone. This was a thing of magic he was wielding, it reminded him, a freaking D&D campaign and he was a magic-wielding necromancer.

Here went nothing.

He gazed at the book again and swung the bell carefully in the first pattern under that Charter symbol.

He could feel it in a current up his arm, but the sound-proofing held and no sound escaped the chamber. The machine Jax and Ray had hooked into it began reading the tones and trying to interpret what they would do. Then it began printing the readout. “Gideon, what will it do?” Sara asked the AI.

Gideon did not respond. 

“Oh my God. We’ve killed her!” Ray’s face displayed the horror that had made his voice come out like that. Mick thought that was ridiculous. However, as another moment passed, Mick was starting to worry.

“Gideon?” Jax asked, as though taking the pulse of a dear friend. 

“My apologies, Mr. Jackson. I was reading it and my systems slowed down to sleep mode. It is almost certainly from the bell. It appears I will need to create a VPN to make sure the bells do not fry my system. I should be able to do this in ten minutes.”

Mick put the bells down on the floor of the sound-proof chamber and drew his hands out of the gloves and away from it. Stein and Ray looked at him in horror. Jax was looking anywhere but at Mick. Amaya and Sara were watching the ceiling as though they could see Gideon.

“It appears that the effects that bell in that pattern would have is to put everyone who hears it to sleep,” Gideon continued.

Jax got up. “I’ll go check your systems to make sure it didn’t do any damage.” He strode from the room.

Mick found a seat and sat, grabbing his beer, and then inhaled and exhaled a few times, damn his heartrate. He was fine killing people. Had done it a lot actually. He was fine burning people to a crisp. But the ability to do things to everyone who heard a little bell ring, even by accident? He hadn’t previously considered that a possibility and god only knew he had clumsy hands and an impulse control problem. He would have to get that under control. Damn it.

“Gideon, let me know when you’ve got that protection on you up and running,” he told her.

“Yes, Mr. Rory.”

“I’m going to go get drunk.” He started from the room, determined not to see Stein and Ray’s facial expressions in his mind. Instead, the memory of the bells came up in his mind stronger. If he just left them there, there was a good chance somebody else would try to wield them – somebody named Ray, or he could see Amaya or Nate trying it. He stopped and shook his head, and went back across the room to throw open the sound-proof testing machine, tuck Sleepy, as he determined the bell’s nickname should be, back inside the bandolier, making damn sure to hold onto the ringing dongle as he did so, and dragged the belt with him as he went.

\--

He slept the next six hours before he woke up with a start. Len’s ghost was watching him. “What do you want?” he snapped at him. Stein had told him he was hallucinating Len’s ghost. Didn’t change the fact that Len’s ghost was there. 

Len looked at him with sadness in his eyes and disappeared. Mick thought he could hear water around him as he did and felt as though he could reach out and follow Len if he wanted to. He reached out and found his body was getting cold. 

He stopped, startled by the sudden decrease in temperature and rubbed himself to get warm again. Once he was warm again, he swung back the blankets and sat up, and groaned, wondering who had drunk him under the table the day before. He ordered a drink of water and an aspirin and went to get it before his eyes fell across the bell bandolier.

Fuck.

He finished the glass before strapping the bandolier across his chest and his heat gun on his thigh and venturing out to the bridge where Gideon said he would find the others. 

Everyone turned to look at him and fell silent. He got the feeling they were talking about him. 

“What?” he snapped. 

“Gideon is ready if you are,” Ray said.

“Why’d you let me sleep so long?” 

“I recommended more sleep. The Charter magic took a lot of energy and your body could not take much more of it before it started eating itself,” Gideon responded. 

Mick grunted but saw the logic. 

“So if everyone’s ready, I’d like to test the rest of the patterns on Sleepy here” - he patted the smallest bell pouch - “and then try some more Charter magic.”

Stein looked immensely pleased. 

“Professor, you get notebook duty today. Amaya writes in cursive which looks like my grandmother’s.”

Nate choked down a chuckle, but not before everyone in the room was staring.

Sara bristled. “What’s wrong with her writing like your grandmother?”

Nate began, “Well, 1940s cursive is notoriously difficult to read. I had to read several books in it for my thesis and they were all looped and almost no marks to differentiate the letters. Oh, and it occurs to me that at least one of those was probably written by you actually – ”

Mick met Amaya’s eyes, his smile growing as her eyebrow raised higher and higher at Nate’s babbling. When Nate paused long enough for a breath, he cut in, “I don’t read cursive.” 

\--

This time, Gideon’s systems did not shut down, so Mick kept ringing all the patterns that were written down in the book, feeling the power of what could only be the Charter magic surging up his arm again. Stein all but darted for every printout of what that stroke was anticipated to do and wrote down what Gideon was saying in his fast – and, Mick hoped, readable – handwriting. 

“This is amazing, Mr. Rory. Are you aware the effect that these bells must have on the human brain in order to produce these results? I would like to test them on Gideon’s scanning device to see where each sound resonates within the brain. Also, does the symbol on the side of each bell have the same effect by itself or is it a combination of the sound and the symbol that does it?”

“Professor, while that might be interesting to nerds like you, I’m more interested in finding out what each bell does. I like to know when I’m killing someone.”

Stein blanched. “Yes, Mr. Rory. You do have a point. However, you can’t deny that it would be interesting to find out. If we can channel it at certain points, we might even be able to fix your hallucinations.”

Mick grunted. The idea of a version of Len, even if it was his own memory playing tricks with his eyes and ears, being sent away permanently was not one he liked. That Len had talked him out of a great many things that he didn’t want to breathe a word of, not to Stein in their session, not to anybody. “Maybe it’ll fix my firebug,” he responded to Stein.

“Ah, yes, that too.” Stein went quiet then beamed again. “Think of the possibilities!”

Mick couldn’t help it – he liked people buzzing around him in excitement, for all he acted like he didn’t. Besides, this was a pleasant alternative to being told he was too stupid to get why the science bros were excited. “After we are done finding out what each bell can do, I might agree to test out some of the bells on Gideon’s device.”

“Oh thank you, Mr. Rory.”

Mick smirked at the earnestness. “Now keep writing if you know what’s good for you.” 

\--

After they were done with all the patterns of Sleepy, Mick put the bell back in the pouch and withdrew his hands from the gloves. “We’re done with all the patterns from that bell.”

“Do you want to move onto the next one?” Stein said.

“Gideon, go get Jax,” Mick said.

“Why?” Stein asked. 

Mick stared. For a man of science, sometimes the Professor had difficulty putting memory together with common sense. “Because the first time, I knocked Gideon out. What if this one kills her?”

Stein’s eyes went wide at the potential consequence. “Ahh. Good thinking, Mr. Rory.”

Mick chuckled at him. “Gideon, in the meantime, get me a beer.”

Stein sighed. “Are you sure it’s entirely wise to be drunk for this experiment?”

Mick raised an eyebrow at Stein. “I have half a mind to correct my order into something extremely flammable, Professor.”

Stein shook his head. “Wonderful, Mr. Rory. I see we’re back to threats of arson against teammates.”

Mick laughed. “I’m not threatening you, Professor. I’m saying that only drinks over 40% alcohol per volume are flammable, and I have half a mind to drink a bottle of that in front of you till I’m nearly passed out, and then test the next bell.”

Stein blinked at him. “I wasn’t aware you knew at what percent alcohol burned.”

“It has to do with fire, Professor. See, I do know some things.” That got Stein spluttering and Mick some peace and quiet to work on an additional Charter symbol or two until the beer arrived.

Jax walked into medlab a minute later. “Gideon said you needed me for something. You better not have hurt my ship.”

Mick snorted, taking another swig from his beer. “Calm down, Kid. This is more of a just in case. We’re done with bell one, and I want to make sure bell two doesn’t do anything to her, given that she is what keeps this rust bucket, tin can in the air.”

Jax nodded. “Makes sense. How are you, Gray?” Stein whispered something to Jax. “Aww, come on, Gray. You deserved that one. He is Heatwave. Fire is kinda his thing.” Mick guessed Stein was going over how he had forgotten that Mick loved fire (fire was in fact his hyperfixation but like hell he was telling the Professor that) in addition to just being an arsonist. He had to agree with Jax on this one. 

He drew the Charter symbol to have a hovering fire there – different from the one that just went up and down, but he wasn’t sure how, or why this one in specific called to him. Maybe because it felt different, safer somehow. It seemed to have a vector as part of it, or that’s what it looked like, at any rate. There were a few like that: hover fire but with directions. It also took a lot more concentration out of him, so it was good to practice enough so that if he should need it, it would require as little concentration on getting it right as possible.

As soon as he completed it and the little fire hovered in the air, Jax and Stein cried out. “Could you not?” Jax scolded.

“It doesn’t burn anything,” he complained, but put it out – easier to do than the straight up and down one. 

After it was out, Stein and Jax approached, Stein eager to put the slight fire incident away in exchange for his excitement about potential scientific examinations. “Are we all ready to test the second bell?”

They tested the second bell through all the patterns in the book before Mick began to feel it, though whether it was the energy it was taking out of him or the beer, whose bottle his hand when seeking it never found empty - though he didn’t know who kept filling it - he was not sure. Either way, when he slipped the bell back into its pouch and turned to Stein, a wave of dizziness and exhaustion hit him, so he sat and took another drink, gazing at Stein as he finished writing down what the second bell would do.

“Fire away, Professor. What’s it do?” he asked.

“Well, this one appears to wake things up and to command things to come back. Gideon wasn’t sure from where, but I’d say judging – .”

“Probably bringing things back to life. I am a type of necromancer now apparently.” Mick screwed up his face at the thought, though whether it was because he had never wanted meta-human abilities, whether it was because he didn’t know how he felt about being able to call an army of Dead things to follow him, or whether it was that little thought nagging at the back of his brain that he didn’t dare look at too closely, not even to give it a name, was anybody’s guess.

Stein gave a nod. “That is just what I was going to say. Except without the term necromancer.”

Mick turned to him, raising his eyebrows. “Why not? It at least makes this fun.”

Stein’s features shifted to angry constipation. “Mr. Rory, I don’t think you quite grasp the gravity of the situation. This is why I insisted somebody else should take on the duties associated with your new position.”

Mick laughed, probably sounding closer to hysteria than he was entirely comfortable with. “Professor, I don’t think you realize that everybody has their own way of dealing with that. One of these bells will likely kill everyone and everything, at least according to what little historical record Gideon was able to find, which given that we are literally talking about someone who can enter death, I don’t think is an exaggeration.” Mick took a deep breath and thought about the bell he’d just rung. “And even with this bell, I don’t think people come back right.”

He must have said it in a different tone from normal because Stein snapped his head around to stare at him. Stein licked his lips after a moment and pressed them together

He took another swig of beer. “What?” he said when Stein didn’t stop staring.

“We haven’t yet talked about Mr. Snart and your partnership with him. May I suggest it in our session today?”

Mick was on his feet and in Stein’s face in a second. Stein to his credit stood his ground. “You bring him up again and I will burn you where you stand.” Mick stared into Stein’s eyes for a moment and then when back over to sit. “Sides, my job now is apparently to put Dead things back to sleep, not bring them to life.”

Stein exhaled, but looked at him with an expression of sadness. 

Damnit. 

\--

“Gideon, send me over what each of the patterns tested so far do. Audio the fucker.” They were finishing up their daily meeting in the Captain’s office where Sara was doing a far better job handing out tasks to get battle ready than Rip ever did in Mick’s opinion. Mick interrupted to ask for the notes before Sara could get to him.

“Yes, Mr. Rory,” Gideon responded.

“Professor, give me your notes, too.” Stein opened his mouth. Mick didn’t care if what he was going to say was a protest about why he should keep hold of the notes or an agreement to hand them over. They were his. They were related to him doing well on a job. He turned to Sara, who had raised an eyebrow at him. “I’m going to memorize how to use these weapons before our next fight against these time baddies.”

Sara nodded. “Give him the notes, Martin.”

Stein handed over the notes. 

\--

Once Mick was alone in his room, he threw himself into his chair and let loose a sigh. “Gideon, tell me what’s what.” He took the book from his pocket – cargo pockets, he had no idea how anybody did without them – and began puzzling over the writing inside. He had to commend Stein on the neatness of his writing and clarity of his notetaking – a very good professor to learn from, and not too much technical jargon either.

“The first pattern is designed to work on everything that hears it and call them back. The second is softer and seems to be more directed at actually waking people up.”

Mick nodded. “So like an alarm clock?”

“Yes, Mr. Rory,” Gideon responded. “Except one that is more a command than a suggestion.”

Mick still flinched whenever he thought about things done under command: they reminded him of his entire time as Kronos taking orders from the Time Masters. “Is it possible to design a test like the Professor wanted to do, testing where in the brain each affects?”

“I would need a brain to do it with, but yes.”

There was something about the way that Gideon said that that made him narrow his eyes. “Without killing the person or making them jump around like a puppet or a bounty hunter?”

Gideon seemed both amused and sympathetic. “Yes, I can make a copy of the brain.”

He nodded. “Good.” He leaned back and thought about it a little, and an image of what was certainly a bad idea came to mind, which he had a suspicion that the Charter symbols with vectors might connect to. “Any idea about the fire marks with the directions?”

“They do all seem to be a set.”

Mick grunted, as it seemed more and more likely. “A set for what? Have you been able to find anything related to them?”

“From what I have found, necromancers avoid them.”

“What do they do when put together?”

“They appear to be unique to the Charter Mages and common enough that they weren’t written down. And the Abhorsen used them most.” Which wasn’t an answer to his question at all. Or perhaps it was, judging by Gideon’s previous complaint about how Abhorsens didn’t write anything down other than in this book.

Mick picked up his beer and thought about that. “That doesn’t make sense. Why wouldn’t other necromancers use them? That is, if my memories of my aunt casting them and then the four of them making a dot-to-dot with fire and only then going into that icy stream are accurate.”

“Necromancers appear not to favor Charter marks at all,” Gideon said. “In fact, they rather detest them. As for your memories, it is safe to say that what you thought was an exaggeration might not be.”

“I can’t remember her ever going into death without casting something. And these might be that something.” He thought about it then nodded, having made up his mind. “I’m going to try them. Keep watch just in case something goes wrong.”

Mick tried the first one in the book, fire with a direction, facing the direction he was casting it. He felt the direction tug on him, though he wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. As soon as the thing was lit, he found he could keep it in the back of his mind and it would stay lit. He turned his attention to the next one and felt that one tug. He then tried to add the third one, again facing out. The three symbols held in his mind. He was grateful his hyperfocus on fire allowed his attention not to wander enough to let them go out. Fourth symbol then. He felt the strain of keeping that much focus on it, the other three making this one considerably harder to keep his willpower on, a growing pressure behind his eyes. But he managed to draw it while keeping the other ones going, and acknowledged that this was going to suck if he was ever more tired and needed to do it.

The four symbols blazed brighter as soon as he had finished the last one. A thin line of gold fire starting at the first one and ran around to the second, third and fourth, connecting them together. He felt as though he was protected here, the outward facing symbols seeming to draw power from him and aim against the rest of the world. He sat down and felt safe for the first time in a while.

It was only later he realized something further might be needed to enter death, but as for protection functions, he could entirely see the Abhorsens putting them in place just to rest. He sat there like that for a good long time.

\--

The next time they touched down, he strapped on the bells and came out with the rest of the team. A quick ring of Sleepy put everyone in the nearby vicinity to sleep. Including the team. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Len again, smirking like the proud mother hen he could be. Mick reached after him and saw his breath on air that had not been cold enough just a moment before. 

“Leonard,” he whispered after him. The air grew cold enough to feel it on his cheeks and out of the corners of his vision he felt he could see gray water. It felt like it he just took a step toward Snart, he would see the water completely. He reached up to his nose to wipe away something and found frost forming on his skin, like he had been shot with the cold gun, and he shook himself. The air around him grew warm again.

To his credit, he dragged the rest of the team out of there instead of just bolting like he wanted, and not too far away either. He rang the second bell, Wakey Wakey, in their general direction, and showed them the room full of sleeping people.

Sara didn’t even look mad.

\--

“Mr. Rory,” Gideon said when he was alone again, eating a donut topped with maple and lavender something or other – he wondered where had Gideon even gotten that recipe, though it wasn’t half bad. 

“Yeah?”

“The references do not say what else could be necessary to enter death.”

Mick grunted. “Which means I’m on my own, trusting my memories of events I thought were dreams all these years.”

“Your guess is as good as mine at this point,” Gideon said.

\--

Mick built the Charter marks on the floor of the medlab, medlab having been deemed safest just in case something went wrong. Mick didn’t think there would be, but it was nice having Stein and Ray fussing over his wellbeing, so he didn’t say anything, until they tried to put gummy heart monitors on him. He had to draw the line at that. Clothing was staying on. Bell bandolier across his chest. Sword on - he wasn’t sure he trusted his ability with the sword yet, but better safe than sorry. And his heat gun strapped at his side.

So he put the marks in place, the same marks he remembered his aunt always using to enter the icy water, in the order north, then east, then south, then west – “never eat shredded wheat,” his mind filled in the memory device from school, which he figured was as good a reason as to an order as anything else. Reasons as to an order seemed to be important in Charter magic – that much he had found out so far.

As he finished the last one – again a test of concentration and willpower – the thin golden line blazed between the little directional fires and they grew brighter. He felt his attention only having to concentrate on one thing then, and found he could once again shove it to the back of his mind. 

“I still don’t understand why all this has to cause fires?” Stein muttered. 

Mick tilted his head up. “You accusing me of deliberately only learning the ones that cause fires, Professor?”

“I believe you are taking advantage of the ones that do.” The way he said it though, there was none of his usual superciliousness in it. Playful bantering then.

“Maybe the pyromania is due to this. After all, it is his ancestors we are talking about who were previous generations of Abhorsen,” Ray suggested.

“Haircut,” said Mick, sitting down on the floor, in the middle of the Charter magic diamond. “Shut up or I’ll shove a flaming Charter mark onto you. Or I could take you with me. Dead might want a snack.”

“Shutting up,” Ray said .

Mick took a deep breath. The problem was he had no idea how to do the next part of it, but from everything his hazy memories of his aunt brought up, she hadn’t really needed anything but the diamond of fire – the Charter symbols – around her to do it, and that was apparently just for protection. 

So he sat there and tried to figure out how to enter Death. From what he remembered from when his aunt had taken him into the icy, gray water – the same color of gray as he had seen out of the corner of his eye when he tried to follow Len – he had been sitting and suddenly there was a stream with a water fall on one end and everything felt like a dreamscape. Nightmare-scape was more like it, considering where she had taken him. But he had felt the switch inside him that felt the otherworldliness of that place once. So he focused on reaching inside him to feel that switch again, and on reaching for ghosts.

Something whistled around his ears. The air around him bit his cheek again with cold. He could hear Ray cry out as he closed his eyes and tried to step forward. There was the oddest sensation of wrenching away from something, and the light changed.

When he could hear water around him, he opened his eyes. Icy water by the feel of it creeping up his jeans. “Fucking denim,” he said, shaking at his legs and tucking the pants inside his boots. The current tugging at his legs made it difficult to stand back up, but he wasn’t good at planting his feet firmly on the ground for nothing, and did so against the water.

Visibility was nil. He could see maybe fifty feet in around him at most. This seemed to be in all directions, but as far as he could see, there was the same water and the current. In the direction the current was moving and beckoning his feet to walk, he could hear something loud happening with the water, either a series of rapids or a waterfall. 

He wanted to walk towards it to check it out, and then to come back to where he was, because he sensed that that was deeper into Death. However, he had learned enough from Lisa reading him stories to know that one could get lost in fairyland, and he guessed similar laws applied here. Even if they didn’t, better safe than sorry. He looked down at himself to see if he had anything to put there to remind himself where he came in. He had what he was wearing – the sword, the bells, his heat gun – but not much else, and like heck he was leaving any of that behind. 

The Charter marks occurred to him. If Charter magic worked here, he could combine a fire symbol and a floating symbol and just leave it here. He tried it and it lit a small, floating flame. He would have to note that down when he got out of here for future use. He tried moving, and the floating fire stayed in place. He nodded at it and set off towards the waterfall sound.

He had moved sixty feet when a dark figure became visible, like a rock or block of ice sitting in the water. He pulled out his heat gun and sword and ventured closer. It was definitely a block of some ice-like substance, but there was a glowing thing beneath it. Mick ventured closer and found that it appeared to be a person hidden under the ice, but a person who was glowing with blue light. He frowned.

That blue light looked familiar enough to make his gut uneasy. He walked over to it and touched it with the sword. The ice around it began to melt. The body curled up inside fell face first into the water and the tide began to pull him away. Mick snatched his hand out and pulled the man’s upper body from the water.

He almost dropped him again when he saw who it was he was holding. “Len?” he croaked out, sheathing the sword but leaving his heat gun out.

Len’s head lolled around from the movement. He sheathed the heat gun too – though left it unfastened in the holster, just in case, and put his hands on the side of Len’s head and gave him a little shake. Len gave no signs of waking up. More concerning, however, there was no pulse beneath Mick’s finger, even as he pressed them against where there should be a pulse.

“No. Come on.” He wasn’t going to lose him again. He wasn’t. He pulled him close and felt one of the bells press against him.

The bells. He thought back to what Gideon had said about the second bell. The first pattern of Wakey Wakey could bring the dead back to life. Here went a terrible idea. 

He shifted Len’s body into the crook of one arm and unfastened Wakey Wakey’s pouch, pulling out the bell and keeping it from ringing with his pinkie until he got it upright. His brain wasn’t great at remembering a lot, he knew. Words just merged together and made a mess when he tried to recall them. But he had a gift for patterns, particularly patterns he had moved in, and now, seeing and feeling the pattern in his mind, he rang the bell in it. 

There was a pulse, a sudden tension in Len’s body as all the muscles tensed. Wind tried to push his legs towards the waterfall, which sounded like it had moved closer too. He clung on to Len, terrified of losing him. Then he turned around and started to stride back against the current. He found the fire he had left flickering and floating and just beyond it seemed to be a wall. He pressed his hand against the wall, and it gave way.

He stumbled forward, pressing his palm against the Waverider floor, and found himself almost numb from the cold. There was actual ice on him. “Fuck this cold.” 

Stein and Ray were both staring next to him.

There was a choking sound next to him, before what sounded like the vomiting of a drowning man. 

Shit. Len. 

He turned to find Len’s naked body next to him, coughing up a mixture of the glowing blue that he had been encased in that was the same color as the Oculus and the gray water that was the water in Death where he had been.

“Leonard.” He took him in his arms, swinging off his jacket to put it around his shoulders and pulling him up and rubbing his back to better let him get it all out of his lungs.

“Oh my god, it’s Mr. Snart!” Stein’s voice exclaimed.

“It’s Leonard!”

“He’s hurt, you idiots!” Mick responded. Ray tried to get into the diamond and failed. Mick waved his hand, and the diamond went out. When Ray got past, he and Mick carried Len over to Gideon’s beds and put a blanket over him, with a still gaping Stein following after. Gideon began warming the bed to make sure he didn’t have hypothermia.

“Inform Birdie of this immediately,” Mick told Gideon, then sat down next to Len, who was having trouble opening his eyes fully and still convulsing and coughing as though he couldn’t figure out how to breathe. And he was pale, so, so pale, and smelled awful. And kept cringing away from things, confusion clear on his face. 

“Leonard,” Mick said to him, reaching out a hand for his. He caught it. Len looked over at him, then flinched as if a burst of agony had hit him between the shoulder blades. In all his memory, Mick couldn’t recall a time when Len had ever cry out before, so he wouldn’t have expected that even if Len was dying, but he could only count the time Len had made a sound from pain like he was now on one hand, which made Mick squeeze Len’s hand on horrified instinct. Len clutched at it for dear life, still looking panicked, unfocused. 

“Len, come on, I need you,” Mick said over again.

“When in doubt, ring Saraneth,” he could hear a pleasant female voice saying in his mind. “Do you remember which one Saraneth is?”

“Course I do.” He reached for the second largest bell. “It’s this one.” It dawned on him a moment later that the woman whose voice he heard wasn’t in the room, which was splendid as it meant his hallucinations were now switching from just Len to other people as well. But maybe the change was because Len was now in front of him, clinging to him and gasping like a fish on land, panicking and very much in need. 

The bell slid out into his hand and the first pattern under the mark on its page slid into his mind. He hoped that one was the right one for whatever it did and rang the bell. 

Len sat up straight as a puppet someone has just picked up the string of and attentive as he was on too much coffee and planning. His big eyes turned on Mick, as they only did in unguarded moments of intense relaxation and happiness (like after Mick had jacked him off after they’d gotten their warehouse) or complete and utter terror (one instance of which he’d nearly burned Lewis to death for causing).

“Relax. I got you,” Mick said. Len leaned back against the mattress, letting a sigh escape him. When Stein moved closer to him, though, he still snapped his head over to him, giving him a querying expression.

“Snart, you remember the Professor?” Mick asked.

Len gave a small shoulder shrug. 

“Can you speak?” 

Len thought about it and shook his head, defeated. 

“Gideon, do any of the necromancers’ bells give someone back the ability to speak?” Mick snapped at Gideon.

“The fourth bell tends to be what necromancers use for that purpose.” 

Len looked up at the ceiling where Gideon’s voice was coming from, a surprised smile coming over his features. 

Mick chuckled in the back of his nose. “You’re a geek, you know that?” he told Len.

Len squinted and raised an eyebrow at him. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Mick responded to the eyebrow raise. “I know. I’m a geek too.” He looked back up at Gideon’s speakers. “Anything about the way to ring it or should I just try the first pattern on the list?”

“I am finding nothing on that being a negative way to ring it.”

“Got it. So I’m on my own for this one.” He drew the bell in question and rang it in the pattern under its Charter mark. 

Len heard, tensed for a moment, hands up to protect himself. Then he sighed, making the first sound he had made since crying out.

“Thanks. I guess I owe you a favor.” Full drawl, which meant unsure of his surrounding, and the way he kept glancing around indicated wariness.

Mick blinked at him. “You don’t remember anything, do you?”

Len shrugged, but glanced at Mick as though uncertain what he intended to do. Sizing him up, Mick realized with a sinking heart after a minute that his continued edginess meant he didn’t recognize Mick as safe. 

Mick felt his pulse surge and sat down, blowing air through his lips in an effort to calm himself. “Do you remember your name?”

Len opened his mouth in the typical Snart expression, ready to make a caustic remark, then interrupted it midway with an expression of growing horror. 

“Your name is Leonard Snart and I love you, man.”

Len’s head shot up in shock before a small smile took its place like the cat that got the cream. A lot of the wariness fell away from his face, at least the wariness directed towards Mick. 

“You dumbass. Just ‘cause someone says they love you is no reason for that guardedness to go away. I got to be all the protection between you and Lisa?”

Len’s head rocketed up, his expression settling on a faint smile. “Lisa… I remember her.”

“You better, Snart,” Mick said. 

“Are you telling me he remembers nothing other than his sister?” Stein’s voice said from behind Mick. 

“Him, I don’t trust.” Len nodded at Stein. “There. That’s someone.”

Mick laughed and winced. Before his laughter could get more than just an edge hysterical, he said, “God, I missed you.”

Len gave a full shrug this time, smirking, “You got me beat here. I still don’t remember your name. Though judging by your familiarity with me, I think I missed you as well.”

Mick wanted to hug him, but figured Len wouldn’t appreciate that, the goddamn alley cat of a man.

Len gazed at him and tipped his head. “The name ‘Mick’ is coming to mind.” 

Screw the prickliness. Mick went over and gathered him into his arms. 

Len gradually loosened in his arms and buried his face into Mick’s shoulder. “Missed you too, Mick.”


End file.
